Genderbitch: Musings of a Trans Chickhttps://genderbitch.wordpress.com
Just another angry, poly, neopagan, queer, PWD, financially challenged, trans chick's blogThu, 25 Jun 2015 01:23:00 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/b7a343e2560acbd3e0261218dd42fdb4?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngGenderbitch: Musings of a Trans Chickhttps://genderbitch.wordpress.com
So You Want To Express Your Privileged Opinion In A Conversation About Oppression And Survival!https://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/opinions/
https://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/opinions/#commentsSun, 29 Jul 2012 03:28:18 +0000http://genderbitch.wordpress.com/?p=1132]]>Oh opinions, everyone has them. Just like anuses and poor life decisions. Aren’t they great? Lots of people want to share their opinions, ESPECIALLY when other people are talking about something deeply personal, painful and emotionally traumatizing!

Well fear not, person who feels oh so important! I have a guide for you about that very thing you want to do! What is that? Expressing your gloriously necessary opinions in situations where you have tons of privilege and participate in horrible systems of violent oppression, of course!

1: Knowledge is Power? Power is Knowledge? Fuck if I know!

Worried that you might not want to express yourself if you realize just how meaningless, irrelevant and goshdarn oppressive your opinion is in the situation? Well you’re in luck! You have the magical powers of “I don’t know shit!” on your side! Just make sure that you are so woefully fucking ignorant of everything to do with the conversation you want to insert yourself into that you couldn’t possibly realize that you don’t belong in the discussion at all!

Especially not saying the awful shit you wanted to!

Gosh, if you had any idea just how much of a pile of shit your opinion actually is, you would never shove your entitled ass into places it doesn’t belong ever again! And we can’t have that.

Alright, you have your foot in the door! You’ve said something truly abhorrent and now everyone you’ve just harmed deeply wants your ass on a spit and roasting. Oh dear, how bad for you! How ever will you escape this horrible situation? Well if you’re from the United States or having a raging boner for their governmental conventions, the words “free speech” and a good old dosage of your previously used ignorance mentioned above, of course!

Remember, don’t actually know what free speech means! Because if you realize that criticizing your horrific opinions and your asinine intrusions into things you don’t know anything about is also an exercise of freedom of speech you would really be screwed then!

Also make sure to scream it out as shrilly as possible! Add a lot of whining and claiming your rights are being violated, as though the oppressed people could possibly muster power over your hideously privileged ass with your people taking it away from them violently at every turn. That’ll teach them for responding to you!

3: THERE’S NO FOREST, ONLY TREES!

Oh no! Perhaps you aren’t from the USA and free speech isn’t a buzzword that no one understands in your country! Or perhaps you already used free speech and they saw right through you! The only way you can get out of this one is the brilliant art of distraction! And if you’re really planning ahead, you can even use this method right in the beginning!

Just find a tiny inaccuracy, even if it doesn’t actually exist, some minute detail that if misunderstood by someone ignorant could be taken to be wrong. As soon as you find it, jump on it like it was a life raft in a hurricane! Hold on tight, anyone more on top of things than you will immediately realize that you’re faking everyone out because you know just how much of an ignorant jackass you really are! Gnaw on it like a bone and make sure that everyone knows just how wrong this tiny thing is. That way they don’t notice the big picture and especially not your demonstration of how little you know of it.

4: BUT BUT BUT MY FEELINGS!

Having a hard time keeping your opinion firmly inserted into the conversation? Is your ignorance wearing off a little and you’re being forced to consider the fact that you might be a giant bigoted asshole after all?

Fear not! All you have to do is muster some tears, feel really really REALLY hurt that people are starting to be harsh or not listening to you or GOD FORBID yelled at you even a little, and start accusing everyone of being negative, hateful or hurtful! Hell, you could even pull out all the stops and call them abusive, as though you have any idea how abuse actually works!

If you soak yourself in your tears and feels so much that you can barely breathe, you won’t have time to think about the indisputable fact that oppressed people have feelings too! And that far more than their feelings are hurt every single day by people like you and the violent shit you perpetrate! Once you’re effectively ignoring how your opinion just contributed to that, it’s easy to be an entitled shitsack.

It will bring all your privileged friends running because god forbid anyone privileged who makes a mistake should ever be criticized harshly or shot down! So you will have loads of backup, expressing all of their useless horrible opinions and providing all the insulation you require from how much of a soulless and entitled human being you really are.

Wonderful right? Now you can stick your nose where it doesn’t belong and vomit uselessness into every single conversation about people you perpetrate violence against without ever having to worry about the slightest discomfort on your part!

]]>https://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/opinions/feed/1genderbitchYou Don’t Get To Tell Us Who Our Enemies Arehttps://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/you-dont-get-to-tell-us-who-our-enemies-are/
https://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/you-dont-get-to-tell-us-who-our-enemies-are/#commentsSat, 28 Jan 2012 20:21:55 +0000http://genderbitch.wordpress.com/?p=1117]]>The internet has been shitstorming lately. It’s a familiar sort of shitstorm, the kind that arises over and over again in response to a far worse thing.

Wolves in sheep’s clothing.

If you’re not familiar with the feminism and the GL…b…. (t?) communities then you probably don’t know that, despite talking a great deal about privilege and the dangers that arise from trust for the privileged, mainstream feminism and cisGLB have this very bad habit of trying to tell women (woc and trans women and twoc) and trans people, bisexuals and poc (and any combination) respectively, who to trust.

Hugo has been busy excusing his history as an abuser, a rapist and a creeper douchebro who preys on his own students, while attacking women (especially women of color, with his rampant racism) who criticize him. It gets worse though. You see, a lot of mainstream white feminist bloggers (like Amanda Marcotte, who I have no love lost for) and sites are throwing in with him (just google searching his name can find a bunch of feminists defending him) while going after mostly the woc who criticize him.

This isn’t a new thing. It’s an ongoing trend. People like those two, privileged and trying to act as spokespeople for groups they aren’t even part of or attacking those groups and then freaking out when they get called on it? Not new. Very common. Along with the inevitable defense squad, oftentimes people you would think knew better but don’t. Or if they do they don’t give a shit.

It’s bullshit. It’s privileged, useless, self serving, hateful bullshit. We know who our enemies are. Our enemies are the people who try to rob us of our humanity, whether subtly or overtly. The enemies of oppressed people of any type are the ones who center themselves, who make careers on the backs of the oppressed and avoid criticism at all costs.

The enemies are the people who do harm (like rape, slurs, etc) and then hide it or try to excuse it and erase it. The enemies are the people who attack those they are privileged over, who use their privileges to hold onto their position of power over the discourse and the community. Not just the people who fire us. Not just the people who beat up oppressed people or overtly try to deny our humanity.

Enemies come in all shapes and sizes and styles. Infiltration has never been out of the question. It’s time for you and the enemies (as real as any other) you defend to sit down and shut the fuck up. And newsflash, all this fucking time you’re spending trying to tell various oppressed people who their “real” enemies are?

Is just proving you’re one of those fucking enemies.

]]>https://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/you-dont-get-to-tell-us-who-our-enemies-are/feed/15genderbitchWords and Offensehttps://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/words-offense/
https://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/words-offense/#commentsSat, 02 Apr 2011 03:39:24 +0000http://genderbitch.wordpress.com/?p=1020]]>A lot of people seem to be under the impression that I am “politically correct”.

This is an odd impression for many reasons, not a few of which relate most to political correctness’ nonsensical application to all sorts of things and the fact that no one can fully agree on a definition for the phrase. The one element of PC that people seem to agree on the most is that it is built around the avoidance of offense (often in relation to oppressed folks). So the actual meat of the assumption isn’t so much that I am politically correct and more that I work to eliminate words that are found offensive byoppressed groups (my own and the ones of others). Mostly slurs.

Ah slurs. Amazing little linguistic fragments of nastiness, they are one of the most misunderstood elements of oppression in existence. But really, this applies to all forms of linguistics. The phrase, “sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me” is the western cultural catchphrase of the almost painfully ignorant train of failure that is Statesider, Canadian and UK comprehension of how language in general (and especially the English language for us) influences the mind and determines learning. This also shows up in how rapidly reading is being pushed out of our (in the States) educational system. No doubt many other countries have similar problems in their own native tongues but I won’t presume myself judge of the severity or presence of the problem in a region, culture and language I’m less than familiar with. I’m not that kind of asshole.

For the most part, the assumption is sound when applied to the activist community. A huge portion of western feminism, western anti capitalism, the western disability rights movement, the Alphabet Soup community (and the oft forgotten trans portion of that group), western fat acceptance, western anti racism and etcetera social justice groups all tend towards addressing slurs and x-supremacist (where x is a privileged group) language in terms of offense. In order to explore this further, let’s go on a merry ride of definitions.

An oppressive slur fits more towards a mixture of definition a and b (an insulting or disparaging remark or innuendo that has a shaming or degrading effect) and is additionally built into structures of systemic oppression. But we’ll get to that later.

b: the state of being insulted or morally outraged <takes offense at the slightest criticism>

The most relevant definitions are used. Now dictionaries are not the best indicators of what things mean in social justice but these definitions do slide rather close to the reality. An -ist slur is a damaging and degrading wording, built into the structures of oppression with a very specific role and offense is used more in terms of a personal harm word (like a strike at the psyche and self esteem of an individual instead of the morality or simple displeasure) than the primary definition. These differences, however, are minor and don’t really change how the words work. Slurs are systemic and offense is personal. This we can all agree on (unless we are quite ignorant about how these things work).

So now I drop the bomb on you. I do not give a single flying or landbound fuck, when it comes to fighting slurs, about offense.

Even my oceanic fucks are not given. Digest that statement for a second. A (former) social justice advocate, marginalized person and (former) activist [edit ~KH] has just told you that when it comes to her reasons for fighting slur use and problematic language that she does not care about offense. Some would find that deeply contradictory. Those people would be wrong. You see, offense isn’t the actual problem. It never has been. It isn’t the thing that makes slurs so ungodly harmful. Furthermore and this is important, offense is not limited to the marginalized and oppressed. Oh. Yes. That’s a bit of a problem isn’t it? Because you see, privileged people can be offended just as easily by marginalized and oppressed people as we can be by them. The effects of the offense may be different (power always adds extra harm to stuff) but there’s no doubt that we offend the privileged every day of every week of every month in any given year. Our anger offends the privileged and hurts them. Our self expression and living our lives offends the privileged and challenges their worldview painfully. The bigot Christian is offended by the lesbian couple holding hands. The cissexist gay man is offended by the trans woman who refuses to be called a drag queen. Chasers of pwd, fat people, trans people and poc are offended by each of those groups rejecting their creeper advances and attacking their fetishization of us/them. Thin people are often offended by fat positivity and fat people refusing to reject their own bodies. Bigoted cis feminists are offended by trans women accessing women only spaces. The list goes on and on. Offense is a very eclectic concept and it is open to anyone, even the oppressor. Even worse, offense is built entirely around direct effect. If a tree falls in the woods it does in fact make a sound, but if no one is there to hear it, no one will cringe at the crash. Likewise if a slur is said in a completely privileged group, without any supporters of oppressed people around (or people who just don’t think words are an issue) who exactly is it offending? No one. No one is there who would be affected. I’ve heard of too many people who just avoid using the phrases and slurs around people they know it will offend and then go and use it around people they know it won’t.

So one of the biggest problems with just concentrating on offense is because offense can be used just as easily against us as it can for us when it comes to getting rid of slurs being spouted by the privileged

Of course slurs are still bad and x-supremacist language still is a problem. Offense being a poor reason to concentrate on doesn’t mean they’re suddenly grand. They are still both utterly abhorrent and dangerous elements of oppression. Offense is just not the reason why. Systemic oppression, concept association and a phenomenon known as “hostile tagging” (where the phrase either tags a person as someone to be hostile to and exclude or tags an area as a hostile place to any oppressed people that come in) are the actual reasons why slurs and x-supremacist language needs to either be eliminated or limited and then reclaimed by the oppressed populations (as opposed to just avoided when around oppressed people).

There are mounds of science behind this. Perhaps not directly, but sociology and psychology have studied for years the impact of words on mindset and viewpoint. The things you say influence you. And as social justice starts to take advantage of this, we’re seeing more and more direct scientific research on how slurs and words in general work in relation to oppression. From an analysis of sexist humor and how it influences behavior to be more sexist in the joker and the audience to an empirical analysis of how ethnic slurs directly affect one’s estimation of a person of color to whom the slur is targeted the direct evidence continues to grow. The results are not any surprise to those of us targeted by slurs of varying types of course. Having personally watched ableism and cissexism blossom in the mindsets of people who use slurs from those groups I can attest to my lack of surprise. But the results are telling. It’s clear that the denial of the power of words on the part of cisgender, white, thin, abled, men, etc has no basis in fact and every basis in denial, now not just to those of us who live it on various axes but to anyone with the willingness to look past that denial and read up on the science of it.

This is also a big portion of why offense should not be what social justice and the privileged individuals who work with the oppressed on it concentrate on. The frighteningly direct way that words influence behavior and in turn directly and effectively boost the effects of oppression on a huge scale is a much bigger concern then whether someone is personally offended. It means that no matter where someone says that slur, even if no one is around that could be offended, it still hurts us overall. And not all of us are offended by all the slurs that affect us, how a person takes a word directed at them depends very heavily on their own personality, experiences and psychology. When the word trap is used for me, even in a nasty way, I’m more afraid of the consequences than I am personally hurt or offended by the word. Offense doesn’t even come into play when I point out trap is a slur and call people out for using it outside of reclamation. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot by concentrating so heavily on offense and ignoring how words directly cause and enforce oppression. And our supporters do the same but with a voice far more heard than ours.

This is not to say that offense is irrelevant. No doubt offending and hurting an oppressed person with your words is oppressive in and of itself, by making them feel less safe and causing pain to them as a privileged person, something that adds to the stress and difficulties of facing oppression and makes life even more difficult for that person. But to treat it as the sole reason why words are problematic, why slurs are what they are? That’s just not correct and even more, it ignores the biggest issue around words that we need to tackle, the one that makes the words deadly even when those of us who are offended don’t hear them.

So no, it’s not about offense. Not entirely. Words really do have astounding power.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can mobilize an entire society in violent hate against me. And we should never forget that fact.

This isn’t a standard post and I’m still more or less on hiatus from blogging. But I do have a question for my readers. A while back I created a page. It’s got a pretty harsh name, harsher than its actual purpose (and if you don’t know what I’m talking about well that answers my question right away, now doesn’t it?) which is to warn people if certain large scale or popular blogs have made serious mistakes and refused to apologize for or admit to them. But as we all know, “The Warning List” or the “Zero Accountability List” isn’t really going to be read by well… anyone (which really is kind of a statement on how bloodthirsty the online social justice activist community can be, including my past self, but that’s an issue I think I’ve gone over to the point of nausea on this blog by now).

Let’s go over the issues first.

As far as things go, the Shit List is very prone to inciting angry responses. People don’t like being called out for mistakes they try to hide (or don’t believe are mistakes) and especially not in a way that’s harsh (we’ll go over whether the list is so harsh that it actually can’t function later in the post) and their sell out apologists also don’t like it. For that reason I’ve gotten a LOT of enraged whining sellouts on that particular page. Including, but not limited to, tone argument dropping assholes, painfully silly people like some wildly off base jackhole who seems to think it’s racist to call out black cis women for cissexism if you’re white (which is oppression olympics to a degree of ridiculousness that I can’t even comprehend), people who LOVE MELISSA SO MUCH THAT THEY CAN’T STAND A SINGLE NEGATIVE THING ABOUT HER BEING ANYWHERE ON THE NET (I mostly delete those Shakesfail comments, because they’re like swarms of locusts, millions of the same old crop eating shit) and people telling me that I’m a mean old uppity bitch and a half.

It’s tiring fielding all this oxygen waste word vomit spraying into my comment queue and as anyone who reads my blog knows, I have a lot more pressing concerns to tire me out than wasting my time on that bullshit.

I’m also really tired of people sending me emails of blogs simply run by people they don’t like or who GASP aren’t polite about oppression or for anything unrelated to the purpose of the list. Let’s face it, if you don’t know what the list is for to the point that you think it’s some kind of personal hate list, well then you certainly aren’t being helped by it. And it isn’t helping me cuz I don’t personally hate anyone on that list. No, not Renee, cuz she did personally apologize to me (so we have no personal quarrel on my end), the reason she’s on the list at all is cuz she specifically refused to allow the apology she said to apply to all the other trans women she attacked with cissexism. No, not Melissa McEwan. That’s more a sense of contempt and perhaps even pity since she still believes we all hate her and weren’t just upset because she has no ability to apologize for eulogizing a genocidal cissexist feminist. And no, not Bil either, I actually find him to be a nice, very likeable guy. He just keeps fucking up on trans stuff is all.

It was never a personal list, if it was, it would be huge cuz there are a ton of activists I have a personal beef with for things unrelated to social justice and I wouldn’t waste space on a non personal blog for it.

And then, is the list even aptly named? Is the design of this resource even helpful or useful? Because let’s face it, calling it a shit list is a bit on edge of overdoing it. And I and others have talked a ton on how SJ does sometimes overdo it. Whether it’s the tumblr army of death descending on one privileged person, even after their apology, to light them on fire, or it’s the tendency to overuse the callout and throw in levels of nasty into it that edge into more revenge than activism, I’d say it’s really time to start analyzing all of this stuff and not ignoring any of it. That includes the early warning system. So I know, at the very least, I’m renaming the shit list to the Zero Accountability List so that my older more vicious model of social justice activism isn’t still acting like a poison for me (nuker’s bane of anger toxicity style). And no doubt the name is a source of a lot of the above confusion. Which doesn’t help anything.

I’d like to think in writing about how the call out is being abused and how a lot of the online SJ community, including myself, had been operating under a mob justice model and acting abusively, I would actually allow that analysis to affect how I handle things, but it just becomes hypocrisy with things titled like “The Shit List” on my blog. So it’s time to change that at least, in the spirit of not being a mob justice fuckwad.

A change in the name will also help make it more intuitive in a world where people just read the titles of things to glean a meaning, and therefore more likely to be used for its actual purpose of “oh hello, I should be careful at this blog cuz they’ve done bad things to people and won’t admit it”, instead of going “OH GOD KINSEY HATES ME/THEM WHYYYYYY.” (Admittedly, Melissa will probably still do the latter even if I changed it to FLUFFY BUTTERFLY HAPPY TIMES LIST OF PEOPLE WHO MADE A MISTAKE AND DIDN’T APOLOGIZE AND MAY MAKE MORE BUT ARE PRETTY AND WONDERFUL AND WE STILL LOVE THEM JUST BE CAREFUL OKIES? OKIES. And no, I won’t change it to that name, even for the hilarity. It’s too long. XD)

The final issue is whether the list is actually helping anyone or not. Let’s face it, if the entire community knows by word of mouth about when a blog makes a serious transphobic, ableist, etc (note: I don’t have racism on the list cuz that shouldn’t be listed on a white girl’s blog. If you’re a poc activist and you have a list of sites who have had accountability fails on racism and not apologized for or admitted to them, I can link you if you want. But listing them myself just centers my white ass and I would like to avoid Tim Wising people) mistake, well then what’s the fucking point of maintaining a list? Who exactly am I telling? If no one doesn’t already know then I’m not going to add some more shit to my list of things I have to do, because I do actually maintain that list. It’s work. And annoying work at that.

So what I’m asking you for, my gentle readers, is to let me know if the list has actually helped you. If I get word from enough people that the list has been helpful (or people tell me that it will help them with the name change) then I’ll continue maintaining it. But if I feel that this is not really achieving much for the work I’m putting into it, I will be getting rid of it immediately. My spoons are not high much less infinite.

I appreciate any of your input but I will be deleting any comments on this post disputing the entry of any of the blogs on the list, even if they are valid disputes (like say, someone has shown accountability for a similar incident later, displaying that their attitudes have changed on those types of fail) because that belongs on the list’s comment page itself. And if you try to troll this page I’m just gonna delete you. Y’all been warned.

~Kinsey

]]>https://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/shit-list-helpful-or-not/feed/28genderbitchHiatus due to health issueshttps://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/hiatus-due-to-health-issues/
https://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/hiatus-due-to-health-issues/#commentsSun, 09 Jan 2011 04:31:05 +0000http://genderbitch.wordpress.com/?p=1070]]>This’ll be a short one folks. I completely forgot to let the WordPress reading crowd what happened. On January 3rd, Monday, I was admitted to a hospital with what ended up being acute appendicitis with a perforation. Since it was already spilling toxic shit into me, they opted to go straight to surgery and in my pain and sick haze I agreed. The appendix came out the night of and I remained in the hospital being pumped full of antibiotics and trying to heal for about 5~6 days. Long story short, I’m alive, I’m out of the post op ward but I’m still not in good shape and it’s gonna be a couple of weeks before I can even function enough to leave the house and buy groceries, much less get some good old social justice work done for y’all.

So, wish me healing love and luck as I take some time off to make my insides not be cut up anymore.

This post’s coherence brought you to by hydrocodone mixed with acetaminophen and several days resting.

It’s deeply personal and for the most part we go way out of our way to protect it. Not just our own but others as well. At least when identity policing and erasure isn’t going on. It’s one of those sacrosanct inviolable rules of the Alphabet Soup community (GLBTQQIAsomethingsomethingetc) that identity trumps all. Don’t police, don’t fuck with it, don’t erase, don’t demean and don’t tell people their identities are invalid.

And that’s what it comes down to. Identity is so sacred to the community that even when one particular identity is ultimately damaging and harmful, props up systemic discrimination and even directly attacks other members of the community, those elements are ignored and people will pretend that it is a simple question of accommodation or identity policing.

Let’s be entirely clear, identity policing isn’t good. But neither is propping up bigotry. So what to do? Should we drop the sacredness of identity? Ignore bigoted identities in order to protect all the others? Luckily I’m not one to subscribe to false dilemmas. Neither option is necessary. What is required is a bit more of a thinking approach. Too often identity is treated in a kneejerk approach. It is considered the ultimate trump card and is reflexively protected with no thought as to what is actually being said, the best example being Carolyn above who utterly ignored the cissexism accusations and even admitted so:

[…]In this example, according to Ms Hope, one or the other has to redefine themselves; she prefers it to be the lesbian. (I’m sure there’s some unsupportable, emotionally heated, argument about “cis[sexual/gender] privilege” in there, somewhere.) […]

-Carolyn Ann of CaroLINES

In fact, more often than not, the painfully awful quote above being a prime example again, the bigotry issue is ignored or dismissed entirely in the debate. This occurs with even heavier intensity and higher frequency when you’re dealing with a privileged party. If you remember the link on appropriation to http://mycultureisnotatrend.tumblr.com and simply follow their tumblr for a while you’ll notice the huge numbers of white people who ignore their white privilege involved in appropriation. Similarly, cis monosexual and polysexual individuals will immediately ignore their own cis privilege involved in the damage their identities do to trans people. Same with binary individuals and nonbinary/genderqueer folk harmed by their (the binary ones) identities.

It becomes fairly obvious that many people will use the sacrosanct status of identity as a shield to protect their own bigotry or engage in apologism for the bigotry of others. And those that don’t will still follow the reflex reaction of defending identity even when that identity is hopelessly toxic and built on a giant pile of bigotry.

But if bigotry is used as a red flag in an identity discussion, allowing for this reflex of unthinking protectiveness to cease for a moment it makes it so identity being sacred is no longer a problem. When the possibility is raised that a given identity has bigotry issues, if people step back for a second and don’t go into ID IS SACRED RAAAAAAGE mode, that one serious flaw in this method of protecting identity becomes null. It is bypassed and allows us to combat the enabling of oppression through identity fully, instead of becoming enablers ourselves in our zealous (and for the most part, positive) attempts to stop identity policing.

Many of us push ourselves. Hard. The things we fight for are precious and denied us so easily, so effortlessly. The pain and suffering we face is awful. Oppression is no joke. It shatters lives. So we fight, battle, educate, speak out and work to fix society or even break it and replace it. And then at the end of the day, we take some time to rest, tend our wounds of the body, mind and soul and wait for the next fight, the next goal, the next set of ignorant people.

Well, not all of us.

There’s no doubt that pain is an element in our motivations. And for some it even becomes a dangerous driving force. With me, it’s less of a fight or flight response making every battle a pitched and dangerous one and more of an entirely different effect from the same basic causes.

It’s no news to anyone that I deal with depression and anxiety and that I have issues with self harm. I work hard not to claw myself and do other forms of physical injury to me. I also try to avoid alcohol and drug use to a self harming point. I don’t succeed every time but I try in all of those areas. I thought I took good care of myself, as well as I could, but I was wrong.

Despite my own advice otherwise, I not only engage with trolls, I’m known for tangling with them. I’ve felt the effects of Anger Toxicity more than once and no doubt the constant toll of fighting every battle I can possibly see or encounter does damage as well. I realize now that keeping myself at this state of readiness always, entering into pointless or even worthless fights (like those with trolls) and pushing myself past the point of reason or function has worsened my situation intensely.

But this isn’t just a case of activist burnout. This isn’t just a case of poor self care. This is consistent. Not isolated. A frequent and chronic issue. And I’m starting to steadily realize that I’m subconsciously doing it purposefully.

I turned activism into another way of making myself bleed.

The most dangerous self harm is the one you can justify. The one you can rationalize so well that you don’t even see it as self harm. That you see it as a necessity. I never recognized how often the pain I put myself in, the burnout, the emotional harm from the insults and attacks slung my way had the same effects, emotionally and mentally, as the clawing, the heavy abusive drinking and other methods of self harm. Recognition is definitely one of the hardest parts though. Denial defined this situation for me and now I actually have an opportunity to change this.

I’m just not sure how. The purpose of this post is twofold. One, it’s to warn you of what I’m facing and showing the signs of it so that those who are facing similar can also address it. And two, it’s to announce a hiatus, effective immediately in order to enable me to rethink how I handle activism and how I handle self care. One post remains in the queue, it will come out both here and at TSC. I will likely be on tumblr occasionally but not for activism purposes, same with twitter.

I will also take guest posts while I am gone.

Anyone can contact me using my email but I will largely be avoiding this work until I can find a way to avoid hurting myself with it. Once I do that, I’ll return and continue my activism, in improved ways.

I think this is an important first step in that. Because right now I’m stepping away from activism to take care of myself. A thing I haven’t been able to do in a very long time.

]]>https://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/activism-self-harm/feed/24genderbitch[Product Review] ScreamingO’s FingO Vibrator for TheirToys.comhttps://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/product-review-1-theirtoys/
https://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/product-review-1-theirtoys/#commentsTue, 26 Oct 2010 15:23:11 +0000http://genderbitch.wordpress.com/?p=1051]]>Hi folks, welcome to the first ever product review on GB. I even made a separate category!

Recently I was asked to review a product from TheirToys.com Sex Toys. After all I do write about sex a lot so I am probably fairly well suited to do this sort of review. After some discussion with their representative I decided to review the Screaming O FingO from (obviously) Screaming O. Specifically the wavy textured one. The product was sent to me for free as thanks for doing the review (and for the publicity that reviews give no matter how they go, of course).

First impressions were favorable. It was compact, light and the squishy waterproof coating covered everything but the back part with the button. Built for easy hiding and quick washing, perfect for a shared home or apartment where you don’t want your flatmates knowing your sexual nature. Or at least you don’t want them having any visible evidence.

The coating was excellent in and of itself. Soft and squishy but firm past a certain point, it gave me the illusion that my fingers were just going to sink into it (but they never did). I had a little bit of trouble with the finger loop at first, mostly because it really sticks to the skin when it is stretched by pressure, but once my finger was all the way in the FingO was a snug and comfortable fit. This was when it being so light really became a giant boon. It felt like little more than a small ring’s worth of weight. Which really helped prevent both finger and hand fatigue during usage (always a concern for masturbation and sex).

The vibration itself is triggered by a small button on the back of the vibe. Pressing it in a small bit will cause it to vibrate until you remove your finger (I can’t say if that’s a feature or if I’m just bad at buttons) and pressing it in deep will click it on until you press the button again all the way. It was a bit of a low key vibration, not very strong, which had both advantages and disadvantages. The biggest advantage of the low vibration level was how much it cut down on the noise the FingO made. Compared to other vibrators I’ve experienced, the audibility of the FingO is a lot lower. This makes it an effective shared apartment or house sort of toy, where waking people up to the noise of vibration is usually a bad thing. The primary disadvantage is that unless you have a ton of sensitivity, it takes a lot longer and is a lot more difficult to reach orgasm using the FingO. That being said, the wavy texture really made up for the low vibration in terms of sensations. The feeling of the wave protrusions really helped to accentuate the vibration, the coating they were made from having just the right amount of flex and give for their purpose. It was very pleasurable, especially on the nipples and areolas.

So, conclusions. FingO is a lowkey, subtle and easily hidden vibe, good for endurance and while the low vibration might be a bit tougher for low sensation people, the wavy texture of the coating more than makes up for that. I was pretty impressed. Definitely worth having as a supplementary vibe and if you’ve got good sensitivity it can easily be your primary “buzzer”.

I’d like to leave a note here that one can use bisexuality to mean more than two genders attracted to provided the why for it isn’t binarist or cissexist. Because the base definition isn’t inherently cissexist, there’s a lot of leeway to play with the word as an identity without running into any problems of the word itself having dangerous power. This post deals with the binarism and cissexism strawman about the “two gender attractions” in bisexuality if one is using that definition. I don’t go into what sort of reasons for expanding bisexuality would be cissexist because generally a given bisexual person you ask about their bisexuality and it applying to more than two genders will have basic identity as a reason and not anything more. So it’s not super relevant.

[Edits added to clarify certain points]

I recently read an article from Julia Serano that filled me with dismay. Not just the article itself but the whole debate about bisexuality and how no one really comprehends the actual issue.

For those who have a deep phobia of hyperlinks (or a really shitty computer, like me), it was an attempt to defend bisexuality from accusations of enforcing the gender binary. Mostly by spouting male/female essentialism (which is pretty cissexist in and of itself and hell, even sexist) and then using it as a descriptor of how there’s a difference in her treatment by society depending on her partner, which is fairly problematic since it’s pulling labeling from a heterosexist, cissexist and binarist society. Never do that. It’s a bad call. Also, shock and awe y’all, this happens with any polysexuality, including pansexuality. It’s not a good reason under any light.

But this isn’t a fisk of her article. Because really, she’s defending bisexuality from a giant strawman fallacy dropped by her just as wrong opponents. I’ve discussed the concept of cissexism and binarism within gay, lesbian and etc labeling before but I haven’t tackled bisexuality’s rather unique situation as of yet and handled the topic in a more general fashion. So today I’m sliding on my details hat and going full steam into what about bisexuality is the binarism and cissexism issue and what isn’t.

See, the thing about bisexuality that everyone forgets (sometimes even some bisexuals) is that, by its base definition, it is a sexual orientation wherein you are attracted to two gender groups. None of them are specified. It says nothing more than that. Bi-sexual. And in and of itself, being attracted to just two gender groups is not binarist, cissexist, sexist or anything. So bisexuality, as a simple, base level definition, is not in any way, shape or form, binarist or cissexist. Even as an expanded term, encompassing many genders, you’re only really dealing with cissexism if the reasons for its newer definition are cissexist. Most people use it specifically for the fact that it’s a word that exists for a collection of sexual orientations that had previously not had a lot of words. Just like the word trans, it may not be perfect (esp around pedants) but that doesn’t make it part of structural oppression.

So where does that binarism and cissexism come into play? Because there is absolutely no doubt that there is binarism and cissexism in play in bisexuality. It comes up every day, same as with the monosexual orientations. You may think I’m contradicting myself but I’m really not. Bisexuality (like everything else) becomes binarist and cissexist when people structure assumptions around it, put it into positions it doesn’t belong and add things to the definition that make it a problem (or create a definition that is problematic itself). For instance, Serano’s assumption that bisexual (a word about genders) is related to sex and that sex is male and female only, that is cissexist and binarist. And that poisons her usage of bisexual as a term.

Bisexuality gets run through the meat grinder of social bullshit pretty hard. People will attach the biological essentialism to it and that’s certainly bad but it gets even worse when you realize something very important about bisexuality and genders with even the most base, pedantic definition.

Bisexuality can just as easily describe an attraction to only say, agender folk and women as it can only men and women.

That’s right, bisexuality is, at its base, old school, pedantic and literal definition just an attraction to two gender groups. Any two. If I was attracted just agender folks and menz, I would be just as bisexual as Julia Serano would for being into men and women. Especially if the formulation of my attraction to agender and bigender folks was different for each of them, like hers is for men and for women. So why is this realization also a revelation about bisexuality that is unpleasant and negative? Because if you think about it a bit, you’ll notice that people equate bisexuality with an attraction to only men and women. And that is binarist. Fully and completely. Not only that, but it’s also sexuality policing. That’s right, by only associating bisexuality with an attraction to men and women only you erase and police those bisexuals who are attracted to another combination of two genders or a collection of many genders. It’s not just damaging to nonbinary gender people but to bisexuals.

Another element that poisons the discourse of bisexuality with binarism (and actually sexuality policing as well) is the utter erasure of other forms of polysexuality. Because let’s face it, pansexuality is attraction regardless of gender. It means that any gender is in (and implicitly claims that the attractions are not different at all between genders for a pansexual). This does not cover people who are attracted to men, women and agender people or women, agender people and one type of mixed form people (two examples of trisexuality) or people who are attracted two types of mixed form people, agender people and men (an example of quadsexuality) or… well you get the idea. You see, there’s more than one sexuality between two and all/regardless. There’s three, four, five, six, etc up to the number of genders that exist. But bisexuality is essentially used as a label umbrella for all of those other sexualities (if people even acknowledge their existence, which is rare.) What happens is, instead of recognizing that biphobia is actually a form of monosexism and bisexuality one simple form of polysexuality, bisexuality replaces polysexuality as the label for non monosexual orientations and biphobia is equated to polysexuality. This erasure is destructive to these other sexualities and centers bisexuality as the only polysexual option beyond pansexuality (which many bisexuals even approach in a bigoted fashion) which creates binarism within bisexuality. Unfortunately, this one isn’t going away any time soon. The mass majority of the straight cis world is going to keep squishing it all into bisexuality or pansexuality and that’s a huge reason why a lot of folks who could fit other words in between are bisexual. This isn’t the fault of bisexual folks, it’s an element of the nasty systems that attack the entire LGBT.

So people on both of the major sides of this debate on bisexuality and binarism are both engaging in binarism, cissexism, erasure and are just flat out wrong. Bisexuality doesn’t enforce the binary and cissexism, the erasure and assumptions pushed onto it, the way essentialism is spilled into it and the way it is policed to only be about men and women does.

And those are the problems all of us, not just the bisexual and polysexual communities, need to solve.

Ever since I started transition, ever since I even started to explore my dissonance, people have walked all over me. People have hurt me, used me, fucked me over and said horrible things about me and the other women like me.

When I started blogging, when I raised my voice approximately a year and a half ago, even more people spewed their hateful bullshit on me. And even more people spewed more subtle transmisogyny at me. Little things but they wore me down never the less.

Because every single time someone calls trans women drama queens or hysterical, even in jest, even to make a point, it invokes transmisogyny and it wounds us. Every time a feminist speculates about whether we should be allowed into the bathrooms of our gender it wounds us. Every time people doubt the existence of nonbinary/genderqueer people it wounds them. Every time a lesbian calls herself a lesbian when dating a trans guy who fully views himself as a man, she wounds him. Every time someone calls a trans woman a trap without express permission from her, they wound her.

Every little fucking thing that people who call themselves allies, friends, family, loved ones, whatever, every subtle transphobic, cissexist, binarist, transmisogynistic and cissupremacist these people do, it wounds one of us and sometimes all of us.

And we are asked to sit down. We are asked not to be harsh. To educate. To accept apologies, whether they’re apologetic for the actions or simply apologetic to have been caught. We’re asked to be kind. We’re asked to suck up. To appease.

Activism requires sacrifices. But we… I, can not be an activist forever. I can’t even do it most of the week. Most of the day. Most of an hour. A significant portion of the year. I can not sacrifice my dignity, my health, my well being and my safety for activism.

A lot of people in a lot of places reacted heavily to the AMO post about call outs. They believed I told them that they had to educate people. Had to be effective. Had to make change. This is wrong. When we take the torch of activism, we make change. Then we have to be effective, then we have to make sacrifices. But who says we have to take the torch of activism? And who says that even if we do, we have to take it permanently or even for long periods at a time?

No one does. Not even me.

Self care comes first. Survival comes first. And I will not sacrifice those. I understand the need for change and education. I understand the fact that without our efforts, the privileged cis majority will never ever ever not in a million years, give us the rights and social acceptance we need to be safe. But I also understand that becoming a casualty to them, catering to their ignorance, to their bullshit, to their pigheaded bigotry, is unacceptable.

It will always be unacceptable.

That is the dilemma we face. The untenable extremes are to allow cissupremacy to reign free and destroy us slowly (but survive for now) or go out in a blaze of glory as we tear it apart (destroying ourselves in the process. But it’s a false dilemma. Many of us find balance. And that’s what everyone, the cis apologists in our midst, the career Nukers, the Appeaser activists who run till they burn out, the raging radicals and various groups and blogs like ONTD_feminism, FWD, The Spectrum Cafe, Questioning Transphobia, Flip Flopping Joy, myself and many others have been having so much trouble articulating or understanding.

There are right ways to do activism (ways that work) but no one has to do activism and no one has to do it all the time. I do activism because I want to. That is the only acceptable reason. Because I want to make a difference for more trans folk than just me and only concentrating on my survival doesn’t do that. But when my survival comes up, when I am in pain or burning out, I can walk away from activism, because my survival is more important. I can take breaks. I can do things that don’t aid the cause but aid me. Because the cause is to help people like me. And if we’re all dying and being harmed for these cis fuckheads then the cause is not being upheld.

Sometimes I am not here to help the cause. Sometimes I will tell you to fuck off instead of educating you, even if you’re sincere. Sometimes I will walk away because it hurts too much and I am not your fucking vending machine.

I am human. And I hurt. And I can’t be an activist all the time for you. I can’t do it and frankly, you don’t deserve it.